Pacino says he didn't want to meet Spector

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Al Pacino said Friday that he decided not to meet famed record producer and convicted killer Phil Spector before portraying him in an HBO movie — only to find he already had.

A friend showed Pacino a 20-year-old photo in which the actor was standing next to Spector. Pacino said he has no memory of the moment.

The movie, "Phil Spector," debuts in March. It focuses on the client-attorney relationship between Spector and Linda Kenney Baden, who represented him in his first trial after he was charged with the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. That ended in a mistrial, but Spector was convicted in a second trial and is now serving 19 years to life in prison.

Pacino wore a dizzying array of wigs in his portrayal of the eccentric Spector, whose "Wall of Sound" style was an integral part of pop music in the early 1960s. The actor said he decided not to meet Spector in prison because he'd be a different man than the one Pacino is portraying, who had not yet been convicted of a crime.

He watched video clips of Spector to help him with his portrayal.

"I didn't know anything about him, except that he was responsible for a lot of great music and this strange case," Pacino said.

Actress Helen Mirren, who portrayed Baden, said she heard stories about Spector from her filmmaker husband, Taylor Hackford, who had hired Spector to provide music for his 1980 film, "The Idolmaker."

The Academy Award-winning Mirren was a last-minute substitute in her role. Bette Midler had begun filming as Baden, but had to withdraw because of a bad back. The film's executive producers are Barry Levinson and David Mamet.

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U.S. Settles Accusations That Doctors Overtreated

A group of doctors who performed unusually high rates of heart procedures on patients at a community hospital in Ohio settled with the Justice Department over accusations that some of the procedures were medically unnecessary, federal regulators announced on Friday.

The settlement covered accusations that the doctors and the hospital, then known as the EMH Regional Medical Center, had billed Medicare for unnecessary medical care from 2001 to 2006. The hospital agreed to pay $3.9 million to settle the accusations, and the physician group, the North Ohio Heart Center, agreed to pay $541,870, according to a Justice Department statement.

Federal regulators had accused the doctors and the hospital of performing unnecessary procedures known as angioplasties, in which a clogged blood vessel is opened. The procedure often requires insertion of a device called a stent to keep the blood vessel from closing again.

Besides the cost to Medicare, “performing medically unnecessary cardiac procedures puts patients’ lives at risk,” said Steven M. Dettelbach, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, which was involved in the investigation. “Patient health and taxpayer dollars have to come before greed,” he said.

The high rate of heart procedures at the hospital was the subject of a front-page article in The New York Times in August 2006. Medicare patients in Elyria, Ohio, where the hospital is located, were receiving angioplasties at a rate nearly four times the national average, a figure that prompted questions from insurers and raised concerns about overtreatment.

The concerns included whether many patients in Ohio and elsewhere were receiving expensive and inappropriate medical treatments because of the high fees the procedures generated.

The settlement represents the latest in a series of actions brought against cardiologists and hospitals for performing questionable cardiac procedures. Patients typically have a choice of treatments, and many doctors say some individuals should be treated more conservatively with medicines rather than through costly procedures.

At the time, the Elyria cardiologists defended their high rates as a result of an aggressive style of medicine, and the doctors continued to defend the medical care they provided. They said the procedures they performed were medically warranted but might not have met the government’s guidelines for reimbursement.

“We choose to settle rather than go to court,” said Dr. John Schaeffer, the chairman of North Ohio Heart, which is now part of the hospital system, EMH Healthcare. The government did not single out any individual physicians, and neither the hospital nor the medical group said it disciplined any of the doctors.

“As the physicians on the ground when these decisions were made and the procedures were performed, we felt confident we were making the correct choices for our patients,” he said in a statement on the group’s Web site. “We still do.”

The former manager of the hospital’s catheterization lab, Kenny Loughner, filed a whistle-blower complaint in October 2006. Mr. Loughner, who will receive $660,859 from the settlement for alerting the government, described how doctors urged nurses and others to falsify complaints of chest pain to justify the unnecessary angioplasties. He also described the doctors’ technique of treating patients in stages, forcing patients to come back for multiple procedures.

The government did not include the accusations in its findings, the hospital said, and they are without merit.

In a separate statement issued by EMH Healthcare, the system’s chief executive, Dr. Donald Sheldon, said “no patients, to our knowledge, were ever at risk, and there is no question that the patients treated had heart disease and some degree of blockage.” The hospital also said it was conducting an external peer review of its cardiac care.

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Your Money: An Invitation to High School Seniors to Write About Finances

At the University of Michigan, one application essay talked about how local education cutbacks forced high school students to pay money to play team sports. As a result, the writer could no longer afford to play.

At Pitzer College, a student used the example of the Ponzi schemer Bernard L. Madoff to take a philosophical look at how much money people truly need to be happy.

As the economy has suffered in recent years and college costs have risen, high school seniors have grappled with the fallout in their own families and channeled their feelings into an increasing number of memorable college application essays about sacrifice, social policy and affluence or its opposite.

“Students never used to write about this stuff,” said Angel Pérez, vice president and dean of admission and financial aid at Pitzer, which is in Claremont, Calif. “I think there is this new consciousness. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

Given the Your Money team’s long-standing endorsement of raising the financial consciousness of the younger set, we wanted to see these writings for ourselves. So we’re asking high school seniors who are applying for college this year to send us application essays that have anything at all to do with money, working, class, the economy and affluence (or lack thereof).

We’ll read them all and publish the best on our Bucks personal finance blog.

There is more on our editorial criteria and the logistics down below, but if you’re trying to figure out what counts as a money essay, think broadly, as many applicants have in recent years. “An essay ought to try to fill in the gaps, to tell us things that we don’t know about you,” said Erica Sanders, managing director of the office of undergraduate admissions at the University of Michigan.

Your guidance counselor and teachers who are writing letters of support for your application may not know about or think to write about your family’s financial status, good or bad. “Maybe a parent had to move out of town for work, and the student writes about taking on more responsibility, that it allowed them to take on more leadership and to contribute to their family in a way that they didn’t even know was possible,” she added, echoing essays she’s read in recent years.

Even if your family has not struggled or become fabulously wealthy, an essay about your part-time job certainly qualifies. “Many of our engineering students will talk about building something and the costs of putting it together,” Ms. Sanders said.

Aside from the Madoff essay, Mr. Perez has read other Pitzer applicant essays and had other conversations with applicants about money and the economy in recent years that have stuck with him.

“One student last year was very affected by the whole conversation about the 1 percent,” he said. “He sent us his proposal for the tax code. The committee thought that this is someone who is clearly thinking about this in a critical way, is informed about what is going on the world and has done some dissecting of the information, and that’s the kind of student we’re looking for.”

The college essay is always a bit of a high-wire act. Harry Bauld, the author of “On Writing the College Application Essay,” which I credit with helping me get into college, paints a visceral, frightening picture of haggard admissions officers reading dozens of essays each day. Then, he asks readers to imagine that their application is 38th in the pile. How are you going to excite that person?

Writing about money can offer a bit of voyeuristic thrill in this regard, but it also poses its own particular challenges. “Most of my students are absolutely brilliant,” said Mr. Bauld, a high school English teacher at Horace Mann School in New York City and a former admissions officer at Columbia and Brown. “But they cannot see their own relationship to economic culture. It’s not comprehensible.”

The more affluent ones, if they do understand it, struggle further when trying to put it into words. “When it becomes visible, it comes accompanied with a U-Haul full of guilt that they’re towing behind them,” he said. “Then, it forces them into various clichés.”

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Gerda Lerner, Historian, Dies at 92

"Fireweed: a Political Autobiography"/Temple University Press

Gerda Lerner and her husband, Carl, in 1966, at her graduation from Columbia with a doctorate.

Gerda Lerner, a scholar and author who helped make the study of women and their lives a legitimate subject for historians and spearheaded the creation of the first graduate program in women’s history in the United States, died on Wednesday in Madison, Wis. She was 92.

Her death was confirmed by Steve J. Stern, a history professor and friend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Dr. Lerner had taught for many years.

In the mid-1960s, armed with a doctorate in history from Columbia University and a dissertation on two abolitionist sisters from South Carolina, Dr. Lerner entered an academic world in which women’s history scarcely existed. The number of historians interested in the subject, she told The New York Times in 1973, “could have fit into a telephone booth.”

“In my courses, the teachers told me about a world in which ostensibly one-half the human race is doing everything significant and the other half doesn’t exist,” Dr. Lerner told The Chicago Tribune in 1993. “I asked myself how this checked against my own life experience. ‘This is garbage; this is not the world in which I have lived,’ I said.”

That picture changed rapidly, in large part because of her efforts while teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in the early 1970s. In creating a graduate program there, Dr. Lerner set about trying to establish women’s history as a respected academic discipline and to raising the status of women in the historical profession. She also began gathering and publishing the primary source material — diaries, letters, speeches and so on — that would allow historians to reconstruct the lives of women.

“She made it happen,” said Alice Kessler-Harris, a history professor at Columbia. “She established women’s history as not just a valid but a central area of scholarship. If you look at any library today, you will see hundreds of books on the subject.”

Gerda Hedwig Kronstein was born on April 30, 1920, in Vienna, where her father, Robert, owned a large pharmacy. Her mother, the former Ilona Neumann, a free-spirited Bohemian at heart, tried unsuccessfully to reconcile her budding career as an artist with her duties as a housewife and mother. This struggle made a marked impression on her daughter.

Immediately after Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Dr. Lerner’s father, a Jew, was tipped off that he was about to be arrested. As a hedge, he had started a pharmacy in Liechtenstein, and there he fled, whereupon the Gestapo arrested his wife and daughter to force his return. Five weeks later, after he sold his Austrian assets for a nominal sum, his wife and daughter were released and left for Liechtenstein as well.

“It was the most important experience of my life, because I didn’t think that I was going to come out alive,” Dr. Lerner told The Chicago Tribune in 1993.

A more thorough investigation by the Gestapo might have revealed that their young prisoner had been doing underground work for the Communists for several years.

Through a marriage of convenience, Gerda Kronstein made her way to New York, where she worked in menial jobs and trained at Sydenham Hospital in Harlem as an X-ray technician. As a saleswoman at a Fifth Avenue candy store, she was fired after she reported her employers to the Labor Department for paying their factory workers less than the minimum wage.

In 1941, she married Carl Lerner, a theater director and Communist who helped her polish her halting English by having her repeat tongue-twisters like “Mae West is wearing a vest.” The couple moved to Hollywood, where Mr. Lerner became an apprentice film editor.

Dr. Lerner placed a short story based on her jail experience, “Prisoners,” in The Clipper, a liberal literary journal, joined the Communist Party and began working with community groups to organize supermarket boycotts and neighborhood child care centers.

“I was unduly intense, super-serious, incapable of small talk or the kind of friendly gossip that hold acquaintances together,” she wrote in “Fireweed: A Political Autobiography” (2002). “My perfectionism, insistence on anti-fascist commitment in word and deed, and general ‘heaviness’ as a person set me apart from others.”

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

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6 takeaways from Google’s antitrust settlement with US regulators

Google Inc. has settled an U.S. antitrust probe that largely leaves its search practices alone. In a major win for Google, the Federal Trade Commission unanimously concluded that there is not enough evidence to support complaints from rivals that the company shows unfair bias in its search results toward its own products.

Below are six of the biggest takeaways from the decision announced Thursday:

— Google promised to license hundreds of important mobile device patents to rivals that make gadgets such as smartphones, tablets and gaming devices, on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” the FTC said. Google got the patents as part of its $ 12.4 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility last year. The patents cover wireless connectivity and other Internet technologies.

— Upon receiving a request to do so, the online search leader pledged to stop using snippets of content from other websites, such as the reviews site Yelp Inc., in its search results. It had already scaled back this practice before the FTC settlement after a complaint from Yelp that triggered the FTC probe. Under the agreement, specialty websites such as those on shopping and travel can request that Google stop including such snippets in the search results, while still providing links to those websites.

— Google pledged to adjust its online advertising system so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks. Some FTC officials had worried that Google’s existing service terms with advertisers make that difficult.

— The FTC’s unanimous conclusion that Google does not practice unfair “search bias” to promote its own properties against competitors is a major victory for the online search leader. It means it won’t have to change its search formula, considered to be the company’s crown jewel.

— Not everyone was happy with the results. FairSearch, a group whose members include rival Microsoft Corp., said the FTC’s “inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators.”

— Next up, European regulators are expected to wrap up a similar investigation of Google’s business practices in the coming weeks.

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Plot spoilers pose 'Downton Abbey' challenge

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There are many delicious reasons to watch the returning "Downton Abbey" and an exasperating one to skip it: The cover's been blown on major plot twists.

In what may be outsized revenge for the American Revolution — or payback for years of exporting lousy U.S. TV and fast food — the Brits are sharing "Downton Abbey" with us, but only after first airing each season.

That wouldn't matter much in the drama's early 20th-century setting but we're not there, are we, PBS and U.K. network ITV? A little gimmick called the Internet makes it impossible to keep story developments from spreading like germ warfare.

As with sports fans who must avoid all media and big-mouthed friends to keep game scores a surprise, "Downton Abbey" addicts are forced to shun rude news reports and blogs about what happens to character A, B or C (no spoilers here, promise).

Heedlessly type in "Downton Abbey season three" online and you risk stumbling into the startling truth that ... well, never mind. If you know, you have our sympathy. If you don't, live in blessed ignorance and careful isolation from Sunday's debut until the Feb. 17 season finale.

"It is unfair that England gets to see 'Downton Abbey' before us because we beat them in a war" was the saucy comment posted on Twitter by producer Damon Lindelof of "Lost" fame.

It's certainly a development galling enough to draw insults. But as Downton's courtly master, Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), once rebuked a blunt-spoken visitor: Steady on, sir, the ladies have suffered quite enough of a shock!

Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of PBS' "Masterpiece" showcase that's home to "Downton," contends it's premature to assess the impact here of the U.K. airing that wrapped Christmas Day. Will ratings be dented by dampened enthusiasm or piracy?

"It will be difficult to say until it airs in this country," Eaton said, with the size of the audience providing a key measurement.

The bar is high compared with last year, when "Downton Abbey" became the most-watched series ever for "Masterpiece" with more than 17 million viewers across seven episodes. With its swooning, buzz-worthy romances, the drama also fed social media and gave PBS a new veneer of cool.

But what's to be done if the season endgame is stuck in your brain? As a famous Brit said in more dire circumstances, never surrender! Go along for the ride that the beautifully produced soap opera-cum-fairy tale offers, admiring how the devilishly clever Julian Fellowes, its creator and writer, foreshadows the events to come.

As Downton's residents adjust to post-War War I England, "there are chills and spills involved in that for all the characters, some laughs and some tears," as Fellowes neatly summed it up.

Knowing the destination doesn't mean you can't appreciate the scenery, including these highlights:

— Newcomer Shirley MacLaine as an American visitor, talking smack with British in-law Violet (Maggie Smith), each wittily knocking the other's nation and values. MacLaine wears pasty, kabuki-like makeup as armor; Smith meets insults with world-weary eyes.

— Michelle Dockery keeping it real as Lady Mary, who's surrendered to love with Matthew (Dan Stevens) while barely softening her sharp edges and steely devotion to family tradition. Bonus: The willowy actress was born to wear sleek 1920s dresses.

— Fashion and its evolution, as Downton's upstairs ladies move from lovely but fussy wardrobes to sassier, clean-lined garb and (except for steadfast Mary) shorter hair, reflections of liberating changes that include the promise of universal suffrage for all British women.

— Stevens as golden-boy Matthew, emerging intact from World War I and still conflicted about his future role as lord of the manor. A side game: See if Stevens, smart as he is, looks distracted by the novels he read on the set as a judge for Britain's Man Booker Prize.

— Cultural, medical and other period tidbits, which are fascinating and a reminder that wise historians never would choose to live in a time before their own. In one instance, a character who may have cancer is told that test results will take up to two nerve-shattering months.

— Fellows' charming faith in the tender side of revolutionaries, at least ones that mate with landed gentry. Irish chauffeur-turned-activist Tom Branson (Allen Leech), who previously turned moist-eyed over the murder of the Russian royal family, loses it again in season three over fiery political warfare.

— A stately house, but fast-paced action. Fellowes said he took a cue from the American mash-up approach to storytelling perfected in shows like "ER" and "The West Wing," with stories big and small, sad and funny and "all sort of plotted up together." The look is period but the energy is "much more modern," as Fellowes put it.

But modernity can be troublesome, proof being the Internet imperiling the drama's surprises for U.S. viewers. Whatever the outcome, Eaton said "Masterpiece" will tread carefully in making changes.

ITV is the primary funder of "Downton Abbey" and has international premiere rights. While a September debut fits the U.K. TV marketplace, it would mean stiffer competition for "Downton" as U.S. networks launch their fall slates, Eaton said.

"We want to make sure we don't do something with 'Downton' that will hurt it in the long run," she said — which, for now, extends to the drama's fourth season set to air on "Masterpiece," its co-producer with Carnival Films.

As for the current run, Eaton, who's no spoilsport, had only this to say: "I think it's the best season yet."

___

Online:

http://www.pbs.org

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Deepwater Horizon Owner Settles With U.S. Over Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

The driller whose floating Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew out in 2010 to cause the nation’s biggest oil spill has agreed to settle civil and criminal claims with the federal government for $1.4 billion, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The Deepwater Horizon exploded, burned and sank in April 2010. Eleven men were killed and millions of gallons of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and fouled the shores of coastal states. The well, known as Macondo, was owned by British oil giant BP, which settled its own criminal charges and some of its civil charges in November for $4.5 billion.

While this settlement resolves the government’s claims against Transocean, that company and the others involved in the spill still face the sprawling, multistate civil case, which is scheduled to begin in February in New Orleans. In a deal filed in federal court in New Orleans, a subsidiary, Transocean Deepwater, agreed to one criminal misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act and will pay a fine of $100 million. Over the next five years, the company will pay civil penalties of $1 billion, the largest ever under the act.

As part of the criminal settlement, Transocean also agreed to pay the National Academy of Sciences and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation $150 million each. Those funds will be applied to oil spill prevention and response in the Gulf of Mexico and natural resource restoration projects. The agreement will be subject to public comment and court approval. The company agreed to five years of monitoring of its drilling practices and improved safety measures.

In a statement, Transocean Ltd., the Switzerland-based parent of the rig owner, said that the company thought these were “important agreements” and called them a “positive step forward” that were “in the best interest of its shareholders and employees.” Of the 11 men killed on the rig, the company said, “their families continue to be in the thoughts and prayers of all of us at Transocean.”

The company announced in September that it had set an “estimated loss contingency” of $1.5 billion against the Justice Department’s claims.

Shares of Transocean Ltd. rose nearly 3 percent on the news, to close at $49.20.

In a statement, Lanny A. Breuer, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, seemed to suggest that Transocean had played a subservient and lesser role in the disaster to that of BP: “Transocean’s rig crew accepted the direction of BP well site leaders to proceed in the face of clear danger signs — at a tragic cost to many of them.” He said that the $1.4 billion “appropriately reflects its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”

Under a law passed last year, 80 percent of the penalty will be applied to projects for restoring the environment and economies of gulf states.

That fact was applauded by a coalition of Gulf Coast restoration groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Audubon Society. A joint statement called this “a great day for the gulf environment and the communities that rely on a healthy ecosystem for their livelihoods.”

Still, the penalty struck some experts in environmental law as somewhat light. David M. Uhlmann, who headed the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section from 2000 to 2007, praised the size of the civil settlement, which he said “reflects the scope of the gulf oil spill tragedy.”

He argued, however, that the criminal penalty should have been at least as onerous, “given Transocean’s numerous failures to drill in a safe manner, which cost 11 workers their lives and billions of dollars in damages to communities along the gulf.” The settlement, he said, should have included seaman’s manslaughter charges, which were part of the BP settlement.

As for the company’s role in following the lead of BP, he said, “following orders is not a defense to criminal charges.”

At the Environmental Protection Agency, Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the office of enforcement and compliance assurance, called the settlement “an important step” toward holding Transocean and others involved in the spill accountable. “E.P.A. will continue to work with D.O.J. and its federal partners to vigorously pursue the government’s claims against all responsible parties and ensure that we are taking every possible step to restore and protect the Gulf Coast ecosystem,” she said.

The multistate trial over claims in the Deepwater Horizon cases that have not been settled are scheduled to begin in February. Stephen J. Herman and James P. Roy, lawyers who represent the steering committee of plaintiffs in the cases, said that Thursday’s settlement did not change the case, and that the plaintiffs thought that BP, Transocean and Halliburton “will be found grossly negligent” at trial.

BP continued its longstanding argument that the accident, in the words of the spokesman Geoff Morrell, “resulted from multiple causes, involving multiple parties,” and that other companies had to shoulder their share of the blame.

Transocean, Mr. Morrell said in a statement, “is finally starting, more than two-and-a-half years after the accident, to do its part for the Gulf Coast.” He then turned his attention to the other major contractor on the well, and said, “Unfortunately, Halliburton continues to deny its significant role in the accident, including its failure to adequately cement and monitor the well.”

Beverly Blohm Stafford, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said that the company “remains confident that all the work it performed with respect to the Macondo well was completed in accordance with BP’s specifications for its well construction plan and instructions,” and so Halliburton, she said was protected from liability through indemnity provisions of its drilling contract.

“We continue to believe that we have substantial legal arguments and defenses against any liability and that BP’s indemnity obligation protects us,” she said. “Accordingly we will maintain our approach of taking all proper actions to protect our interests.”

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Journal News Hires Armed Guards After Outcry Over Map of Gun Permit Holders

A newspaper based in White Plains that drew nationwide anger after publishing the names and addresses of handgun permit holders last month is being guarded by armed security personnel at two of its offices, the publisher said Wednesday.

The increased security comes as the newspaper, The Journal News, has promised to forge ahead with plans to expand its interactive map of permit holders to include a third county in the suburbs of New York City, and local officials there have vowed to block the records’ release.

The armed guards — hired from local private security companies — have been stationed in The Journal News’s headquarters and in a satellite office in West Nyack, N.Y., since last week, said Janet Hasson, the president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group.

“The safety of my staff is my top priority,” Ms. Hasson said in a telephone interview.

The newspaper prompted a national discussion and a torrent of rage online after it published an interactive map of handgun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties on its Web site last month. The Journal News had gathered the information from public records after the school shooting in nearby Newtown, Conn.

Ms. Hasson declined to elaborate on any specific threats to the newspaper’s staff, beyond saying that the permit map had precipitated the security precautions. She did not describe the number of guards or the guns they were carrying.

But an editor at the West Nyack office told the local police that the newspaper had received “a large amount of negative correspondence” related to the publication of the map, according to a police report highlighted by The Rockland County Times on Tuesday. The police report said that e-mails received did not contain threats and that armed guards from a private security firm had not reported any problems at the office.

Despite the anger at the newspaper’s employees — some have had their addresses mapped by bloggers in retaliation — Ms. Hasson said the newspaper would continue to seek permit information for Putnam County.

But officials there, including the county clerk and a state senator, have said they intend to block the release of permit information.

The senator, Greg Ball, a Republican who represents the area, lashed out at the “asinine editors” at The Journal News who, he said, “have gone out of their way to place a virtual scarlet letter on law-abiding firearm owners throughout the region.”

“I thank God that Putnam County has a clerk with the guts to stand up and draw the line here,” Senator Ball said. “This is clearly a violation of privacy and needs to be corrected immediately.”

The county clerk, Dennis J. Sant, said he and other officials were meeting on Wednesday to discuss legal options for stopping the release of the permit information and would hold a news conference on Thursday.

“When these laws were conceived, there was no social media, there was no Google maps,” he said.

Mr. Sant said permit holders were “upstanding citizens” like retired police officers and doctors. “I can’t put these people in harm’s way like this,” he said.

Ms. Hasson said that despite the hectic atmosphere and increased security at The Journal News offices, the newspaper would go to court if necessary to obtain the public records. “Right now they’re denying it,” she said of Putnam officials. “We’re conferring to see what the next steps are.”

It was unclear whether the county officials had the authority to block the release. The permits are public records that were requested by the newspaper using the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

Robert Freeman of the State Committee on Open Government said the officials would be breaking the law if they refused to release the records.

The name and address of any handgun permit holder “shall be a public record,” he said, reading a section of New York State law. “In my opinion,” he added, “there is not a lot of room for interpretation.”

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HTC rumored to debut flagship ‘M7′ smartphone at CES

HTC (2498) will reportedly unveil a new flagship smartphone code-named “M7″ at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. The rumor comes to us from XDA-Developers forum member “Football,” who reported accurate information about unreleased HTC devices in the past. The phone is believed to the be the successor to the One X and could be equipped with a 4.7-inch full HD 1920 x 1080-pixel display, a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, a 13-megapixel rear camera, LTE and HSPA+ connectivity, Beats Audio, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory and a 2,300 mAh battery. The M7 is also said to be HTC’s first smartphone to utilize on-screen navigation keys in place of traditional hardware buttons. 

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

The problem for HTC in the past has been the company’s ability to market its high-end devices to consumers. Despite class-leading features and hardware, HTC’s smartphone sales have stalled in the past year and the company has continued to lose market share. It will be interesting to see if it can turn things around in 2013.

[More from BGR: Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone]

The Consumer Electronics Show is scheduled to take place from January 8th to January 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This article was originally published by BGR

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